Life of the Party

Mondays to Fridays PF's mom takes care of DN while we bring home the bacon. A typical day looks like this :

6.00am (+/- 1 hour)
DN is up. (I don't know who he gets this trait from. Definitely not PF or me because we can sleep through natural disasters and we don't give two hoots about catching the worm.) When DN wakes up, he will stand at the end of the cot that's nearest to our door and start calling us. He starts off with intermittent "ack! ack! ack!" sounds which usually fall on deaf and sleeping ears. So he graduates to "EHHHHH! EHHHHH! EHHHHH!" wails which are bloody annoying, but *sigh* more effective. -_-

7.45am
We try to be out of the house by this time. The drive to PF's mom's place takes about 15 mins. 30 mins if some jokers were tail-gating each other on the PIE and get into an accident.

8.20am
We say good-bye to DN and then go our separate ways to make the moolah.

6.30pm
We try to meet back at PF's mom's place at this time. We have dinner and then bring him back home. Sometimes he takes a nap in the car, sometimes he cries all the way home, sometimes he just sits there and listens to PF and I sing "If You're Happy And You Know It" on repeat because it's one of his favourite songs. All his favourite songs become our most hated songs because he likes them to be sung in repeat mode. -_-

8.00pm
We start his bedtime ritual of wiping him down, changing him into his jammies, reading to him and lastly, feeding him milk.

8.30pm
Good night baby. :D

That's what our Mondays to Fridays look like. On Saturdays, DN becomes a celebrity and goes on a road show to both grandmother's places and other assorted family gatherings. He's quite the ham and will let anyone carry him. Unless it's nap / feeding time and then it's only ME! Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.


Can you spot the baby?

Here's DN entertaining one and all with his amazing ability to eat porridge. Heh.

Separation Anxiety

PF and I are both suffering from a serious bout of separation anxiety. He's now in Bangkok and me? I don't have such a "glamourous" excuse. I was puking my guts out yesterday so DN stayed with my PIL last night. -_-

I missed the little bugger so much! At 8pm, I was lying on the couch, feeling very sorry for myself, watching rubbish on TV and scrolling through all the photos of DN on my phone. Over and over and over. At 11pm, PF and I were on MSN, sending pictures of DN to each other.

Wimps galore.

We are going to be a sorry, pulpy mess next month when PF goes to Portugal and I'm off to Hong Kong for a conference.

The following picture / videos have no link to each other, or this post, they're here to help 2 weakling parents with their separation anxiety. :p


I like this pic. He looks like such a big boy here.


















Here's DN "enjoying" a Gerber puff.
He's wearing a t-shirt I bought for PF for Father's Day... hee hee)



I can't crawl as fast as that!



I finally caught the giant squid! Here's DN going "shhchh...".

My sister is DN's 2nd biggest fan. (My mom's the President of the "DN Forever" Club.) This blog was actually started for her coz she's not in SG.

We used to hate each other. To. The. Core. When we fought, hair was pulled, stomachs were kicked, heads were pushed. No mercy man. She was bad-tempered, unreasonable and annoying like hell. But because I was older and the more patient of the two, our mom always told me, "You know your sister right? Just let her play with it first lah. She's younger than you."

What to do? Give in lor!

I remember being being called away from class once by her Chinese teacher. I was in Pri 4 and she was in Pri 2. When I got to her class, I saw her sitting on the floor with the rest of her class, with a sheepish look on her face. She didn't study for her ting xie (spelling test) and her teacher took it out on me. What did I do? I ratted on her the minute we got home. :D

My sister has a fiery spirit. She is/was prone to making sudden decisions. When she was in Pri 3 or 4, I can't remember, she tried to run away from home after an argument with our mom. Well, technically she did. She told me she was running away and then she left the house. Just like that, with nothing. No extra food, clothes, money or forward planning because she came back less than half an hour later to use the toilet. LOL!

Anyway, we don't hate each other anymore.

I'm so proud of my little sister. She has been studying to be a Speech Therapist and just completed her last exam. Because she studies about child development, she has been giving me little nuggets of information about babies and how they grow and develop. Like this email ...

Hi che,

I was just looking at BB's swimming video again. The theory is so true. When u put DN face down or back down, his arms and legs start kicking and moving violently. In contrast, when u have him propped up, mainly his legs move and you don't see his arms moving violently because the reflex is not stimulated when he is not in the face down/back down position. This is called a "Swimming Reflex" - seen in babies from 2 months to 5 months but usually lasts longer actually. This reflex is inborn and helps the baby survive when they are accidentally dropped in water. I've watched videos where 5 month-old babies can actually swim (while holding their breath - that's another reflex) for a short distance, then they stop coz they are so damn tired.

hehehehe.

dawn


This is my sister, the speech therapist.










That's her (in blue) and her hamster trick - stuffing chocolates into her cheeks. The little one on my left, in red, is my cousin Jaslyne.


I hope DN will have a brother / sister who is as wonderful as mine. (But not yet! Not yet! I still haven't recovered from childbirth!)

Babies are funny creatures

Every once in awhile, DN displays quirky little behaviours.

4-5 months old
His whole body would go into a shaking fit whenever he laughed. His arms would be flailing, his head banging, his legs kicking. This only happened when he was carried though. He doesn't do this anymore. I miss it.

7-8 months old
DN kept shaking his head! Big, violent, random shaking. Very scary! One minute he's picking up a toy, the next he's shaking his head like there's no tomorrow. He did it a lot in the car seat. PF and I started to worry that the back of his head would go bald because of all that friction.

9 months old
He has stopped the violent shaking, thank goodness. This new little quirk is my favourite so far. He squeezes his eyes shut, does a laugh-cum-grin and starts to make a "shhhchhh" sound. It is so funny! I've been trying to get it on video, but that's as easy as trying to catch the elusive giant squid.

Until today!

Okay, I don't have a video. Only a blurred picture. But that's good enough for me!


"Shhhchhh!"
























PF was taking pictures of me bathing DN and he caught DN's latest little quirk on camera. And yes, those are green Shrek ears. They are very comfortable okay!





















My current fav pic. DN looks like one of those big-head dogs. LOL!

Og-GRRRR-e!

Shrek 3 is showing in the cinemas now and McDonald's is selling these green ears at $2 each. I decided to buy a pair.

At this juncture, I should share with all that DN absolutely haaates to have things on his head. No hats, no caps, no bandanas and definitely no green Shrek ears. To get the perfect picture, I would have to

• Place ears on baby's head
• Adjust ears
• Get baby's attention by singing loudly and making stupid faces... basically behaving like an idiot so he will look at the camera
• Hold phone steady while singing and contorting face

And all this in 5 seconds, mind you!

So it was with great trepidation that I approached this gargantuan task. The things I do for Kodak moments. Tsk.

Here are the fruits of my labour.

















Rejected! Baby is too fuzzy.

















Rejected! Baby has already whipped ears off and is inspecting them.

















Rejected! Bad light, fuzzy baby, non-frontal shot.

















Rejected! Baby finds Flash-the-dog more interesting than Mother-the-maniacal-photographer so is looking at the furry friend instead.

















Rejected! Baby is by now annoyed with jumping mother and turning a blind eye to all her efforts.

















ACCEPTED! Not my ideal shot coz this ogre looks too shocked, but we can't win all the time right???















Click on this!

B collected all the photos of the ogre babies on the Sept forum thread and made this. Check out all the ears. Some up, some down, some sideways... hilarious!!!

DN the Aqua Pup!

I meant to upload this long ago, but totally forgot. (It's true what they say about women losing their memory after childbirth - I have the memory of a fish. Call me Nemo.)

*bloop*bloop*

Speaking of fish, DN really likes swimming. Check out his little legs! He expands so much energy in the pool kicking and slapping. His battery is totally flat at the end of every little dip. It's no wonder - you try kicking your legs as fast as him. No joke right!